Bias puts people off newspaper, was a finding of a Harris Interactive/Innovations/WAN poll release at the World Newspapers Congress and World Editors Forum today.

It was the third most popular reason cited by people as to why they didn't read papers, from the online survey of 8,749 adults in seven countries, including the US, Britain, Spain and Australia.

Bias was cited as the most popular reason in Britain and Spain, and the third most popular in Australia.

Now I can hear at least one regular reader of this site, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, spluttering with indignation into his Earl Grey. After all, he does run a very successful and highly biased newspaper.

And British newspapers generally equate a loss of bias with a loss of a newspaper's soul, a descent into a heart of blandness. The horror, the horror.

But the research showed readers had a a different attitude.

"The truth appears to be in harm's way from a reader's view," concluded Douglas Griffen, a consultant to Harris Interactive and Innovation.

"Newspapers must remove their bias to improve their credibility and image," he said.

The poll results suggested that newspapers can significantly upgrade their traditional print product by providing greater objectivity, more in depth reporting and analysis, more information that is directly relevant to their readers' lives, better and more visual design, and more compelling writing.

Harris Interactive also found that people wanted more overseas news.

"While local will always matter to a reader there appears to be a new and urgent need for worldwide news."

This made me a little suspicious, because of the school of thought, and quite a credible one, that in these surveys people always bang on about being desirous of more and more world news, only to turn from the survey and make a beeline for the closest issue of Hello!

Griffen had a nice line from the report that he left the audience with:

"You cannot create more time, only increase its value"

But in an attempt to reinforce my argument, I'm going to leave you with the findings on newspaper credibility. On a scale of 1 to 100, British newspapers scored the lowest, 50. The highest was 67 in Germany. ("Germany? But they are so boring!," P. Dacre.)